Sermon Tone Analysis

Justice

About twenty or so years ago, when Fiona was just my girlfriend, I remember taking down to Redhead Beach on a date.

I bought a hot BBQ chicken as the centre piece of my picnic lunch.

When we got to the car park, we decided it was a bit early for lunch, so we went for a walk along the beach before we would eat.

So we locked everything in the car, and went for a lovely walk.

We come back to the car, and… “Oh no!” Someone’s broken into the car.

And whoever it was has taken off with my hot BBQ chicken.

How dare they!!

Actually, the also took Fiona’s purse - but I was really looking forward to that chicken!

I wanted justice.

I wanted that thief to have to pay.

The reality however, we figured that I was actually the foolish one.

You see, I had the bright idea that because I had a hot chicken in the car, I should leave the window slightly ajar.

But it turns out, my slightly ajar, was actually enough to undo the lock.

I was still mad at the thief, but suddenly I had to admit that I was also to blame.

This little incident can start to identify a problem that we have.

You see, we all long for justice.

But quite often we don’t get a clear cut case.

Now in the case of my thief, certainly the thief is in the wrong, but my foolish action does change the situation.

Some time back, I remember reading a study that looked at the perception of sentences handed down to convicted criminals.

The study first surveyed people with just the main facts of the case.

A significant majority felt the judge was too lenient in the sentences handed down.

But the study went further.

It then took the time and looked at all of the details that the judge considered in handing down the sentence.

Interestingly, the majority surveyed actually changed their minds and felt the sentence was reasonable.

We all long for justice, but justice in a messy world - well… it’s complicated!

Last week I considered the idea of how we manage ourselves in a messy world.

Today I’m going to continue this idea that we’re in a messy world, but I want to focus in on the idea of: where does justice fit in a messy world?

What do we do when our longing for justice puts us in a bit of a conundrum.

Take abortion.

I will declare that all life is precious, including the life of the baby still in the mother’s womb, and therefore I will oppose the killing of this unborn child.

But in our messy world, a girl becomes pregnant through rape.

We can argue that God will redeem this situation into something beautiful, but you can see that our clear ethic has just become messy.

We will also rightly argue that domestic abuse is always wrong.

And it is.

But how do we treat that man who for his entire life has only ever known abuse… who has never seen how to treat people properly.

I’m not excusing the abuser - but you can see how the messed up world has made things messy.

Well, as we try to explore the idea of justice in a messy world, let’s look at a story about David tucked in towards the end of 2 Samuel.

2 Samuel

Well, I’ve been looking at David for near on two months now.

In this time I’ve explored how David has looked at things in quite a different way to the way the world looks at things.

His approach to personal threats sometimes just seem weird.

The big difference is that while most people look at things from the perspective of “How can I take control”, David instead looks at it from God’s perspective: “How can God be given the reigns.”

It’s not that David is perfect.

The last few weeks have blown any such ideas out of the water.

David messes up big time, but when he does, he has the wherewithal to humble himself before God - something which too many other people fail to do.

Well, last week I looked at a particularly messy situation.

I looked at how the earlier situation where David clearly broke the sixth, seventh and tenth commandments, mudied the waters when his sons start to go off the rails.

I took us up to chapter 18, but had we continued in chapter 19 and 20 we would have seen that same mess continue.

It involves a whole bunch of political instability and a pretty gruesome murder as well.

Now as we come to chapter 21, it’s almost as if the author of 2 Samuel is starting to wrap things up.

One commentator I read described chapters 21 to 24 as the epilogue of 2 Samuel.

What we’re going to see in this epilogue, (if that’s what you want to call it), is that things remain messed up, but from within this mess, we find hope.

But this morning, we’re going to specifically look at the first fourteen verses of chapter 21.

So let’s do that now.

The Gibeonite problem

Chapter 21 starts with the words “during the reign of David”.

This means that the events where about to read about might not necessarily have happened after the events of the preceding chapters.

All we know is that it happened some time while David was king.

What we do know is that there has been a famine for three years.

Three years would be tough because anything you’ve stored up is either completely run out or running very low.

They’ve got nothing to eat.

Well, in verse 1, David seeks out the Lord, and God answers.

It’s got to do with Saul’s sinful action against the Gibeonites.

Now, we’re about to be reminded what this is all about, but before I look at that, this raises an interesting idea.

Linking sin and events

If God is linking a specific event to a specific sin, is it reasonable for us to do likewise?

For example, in recent times, various large bush fires or hurricanes were linked to a specific judgement of God resulting from sinful public policies.

Despite something similar happening here, I am very wary of doing the same today.

I believe we are generally overstepping our knowledge when we do.

But in this time, it is made clear to David from the Lord that the two events are linked.

What is clear in this - is that God cares about justice?

Gibeonites deception

So what exactly did happen?

Well, thankfully, the author of 2 Samuel actually reminds us, but you can read for yourself the first part of the backstory in Joshua 9.

So let’s do a quick recap now…

Israel were just coming into the promised land, and as a result of God’s divine judgement, the inhabitants of the land were being rid from the land (something which I know goes against our modern sensibilities, but something I’ll address on another day).

Well, there was one particular nation called the Gibeonites who realised what was happening and decided to trick the Israelites.

They pretended to be travellers from a faraway land, and on the basis that they weren’t local, they made a treaty with Israel to spare them.

But this treaty made a mess in itself.

On one hand, God wanted Israel to remove them.

But on the other, making an oath is very serious and should never be broken.

But the oath goes against what God wants.

Compromise

So now they are doing wrong no matter what they do.

Well, in just this event we start to see how our messed up world means at times, compromise is necessary.

So for a few hundred years, the Gibeonites were allowed to live, but in service to Israel.

Compromise is not the ideal, but in messy situations, compromise is sometimes necessary.

Saul makes it worse

Fast forward to the time of King Saul, and here in 2 Samuel 21 we find out something that we didn’t actually know back in the narrative of Saul’s life.

You see, for all of Saul’s flaws, he was certainly zealous for Israel.

Sometimes that zealous nature took him too far.

He saw the compromise made with the Gibeonites and he didn’t like it.

The Gibeonites were a constant reminder of Israels mistake.

And so in his zeal, he wiped out much of the remaining Gibeonites.

But here we see the big problem.

King Saul broke an oath - and in the eyes of God, this is serious.

So last week we might have had a messy situation, but here we have another.

God’s plan had been averted due to a foolish oath, but then a foolish but zealous act neglects the oath.

David’s problem now